1. Field of the Invention
Apparatuses and methods consistent with aspects of the present invention relate to a document management method and a document management apparatus using the same, and more particularly, to a document management method which searches a document according to a category, and a document management apparatus using the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the widespread proliferation of computers, various documents which had once been handwritten are now being written using application programs, such as Microsoft Word. The documents written with these application programs are stored as files in a computer or other storage medium, such as an optical disk, a hard drive, etc. In addition to written documents, images, such as photographs, drawings, etc., are also stored as files to be managed by using computers.
Since computers include application programs which are used to generate different types of documents for various purposes, for example, presentations, emails, photo galleries, etc., most documents today are generated with a computer. Thus, a computer may routinely manage at least several hundred to several thousand documents.
An operating system which is installed in the computer provides a Web browser, such as Windows Explorer, to manage a number of document files. The Web browser, such as Windows Explorer, generates and removes folders, manages document files in folders, and searches for document files if a user does not know where a desired file is stored.
Since the Web browser, such as Windows Explorer, generally determines the content of document files based on file names, a document management program which has a preview function and a simple manipulation function has been developed. The preview function is provided to preview the content of the files, while the simple manipulation function is provided to manipulate the document files.
A conventional document management program provides a category search function to search categories of the document files to thereby search for a desired file among a plurality of files. Additionally, the conventional document management program further provides functions to preview and manipulate the content of the files included in the searched category.
To use the category search function, a user selects a desired document file and a desired category from a preset category list to thereby assign the desired category to the desired document file. When a user would like to search a document file, he or she selects a category from a category search menu to display the document file or files having the assigned category.
However, category names in the category list are fixed in the conventional document management program. Generally, examples of the fixed category names in the conventional document management program include such names as “business,” “gift,” “holiday,” “idea,” “personal,” “international,” etc., which are irrelevant to folder names used by the computer system or folder names unique to a user. Since the conventional document management program cannot easily identify categories, a user may have difficulty finding a desired file by searching the fixed category names. Also, searching the fixed category names for a document file takes quite some time.
Furthermore, in the situation where a user wants to assign a category to each document file, it takes a long time to assign categories to each of the document files stored in the computer.